


The Knave of Hearts

by ElDiablito_SF



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, M/M, Sexual Content, Yuletide 2016
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-21
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-09-01 05:50:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8611138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ElDiablito_SF/pseuds/ElDiablito_SF
Summary: In the wake of the events of Charles Town, Captain Flint goes through a series of emotional transformations.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lyrstzha](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyrstzha/gifts).



> This picks up some time around the end of episode 2x10 and goes roughly through the events of 3x05. I presume you're all caught up by now!

It is a strange feeling when your heart breaks. More than just a metaphorical shift, the breaking of the heart is followed by a very physical transition. There is a sensation that can be best described as your brain exploding inside your skull, followed by a deafening silence. A full complement of cannonballs exploding inside and around you. And for a while, no one can really predict for how long, the world becomes gray and muted. You walk in that murky darkness for as long as you can, guided only by the idea that there is an exit out of this tunnel of horrors. You do so based on the knowledge that it has happened before, fully aware that when you do come out of the other end of the tunnel, when your brain and your heart remake themselves, it will be in your new image. And you may find yourself staring at your own reflection and not recognizing your own face.

That is, of course, if the tunnel has an exit. Assuming, in the first place, that the tunnel truly is a tunnel. Because what if you’re wrong? And what if the corridor of horrors is merely a loop, without beginning and without an end? You can’t even remember how you ever got inside it. You just keep going… You keep going.

***

 _James McGraw is dead_ , Flint thinks. James McGraw is dead because Miranda is dead and Miranda was the last person who recognized him. Now only Flint remains. Now it is written. In blood and ashes, it is written. Let there be nothing but scorched earth behind him and a sea of flames below. If he is destined for Hell, he will take as many of them with him as he can.

Billy is speaking to him but the thousand cannonballs that exploded in and around Flint have made his voice turn to a whisper. Flint looks at his lips, attempting to read them, but everything is too loud and too quiet at the same time.

“Vane’s men…” Billy is saying. “You need to know… An incident…”

“I don’t care what happened,” Flint barks at his First Mate. “Vane and I have an understanding.”

“It’s Silver,” Billy says and something ignites inside Flint.

“What? What has that shit done this time?!”

Silver! He’s always wanted his freedom, from the sea, from _Flint_. If there was ever a man Flint expected to stab him right up his proverbial arsehole, John Fucking Silver was that man. He’s not even entirely sure why he is so infuriated at Silver in this particular moment. But perhaps, if he were to allow himself a moment of honesty, it is because he is keenly aware how very dependent he has become on the man. To depend on anyone, for anything, while standing over a sea of fire in the wake of Miranda’s death, seems futile.

But Billy’s mouth is moving again and Flint doesn’t want to understand the words that come falling from it.

***

He has them place Silver into his own cabin, right over the wide windowsill behind his desk, where Silver had enjoyed to slink in shadows. A demon perching over Flint’s shoulder.

No, not a demon after all. In fact, an angel, as he'd just been repeatedly told. A martyr. A bloody saint sent by the gods themselves to cut the forestay the way Clotho cuts the golden thread of fate.

A bloody mess. Jesus Christ!

“We need to remove his trousers,” Howell says and Flint stares at the doctor as if the entire world has gone mad. “He soiled himself during the surgery.” Flint blinks. “It’s very common to…”

“I bloody well know that,” Flint snaps. It’s not like he’s never seen a man lose his leg _or_ his bowels before. No need to dwell on the events of the day, is there? “Do what you need, doc. I’ll… I'll look for a blanket.”

The stench hits Flint even through the sheen of dirt and blood that he is wearing like an armor over himself. His hands, he’d like to think, are still encrusted with traces of Ashe’s perfidious guts.

“Doctor,” Flint sighs, setting the blanket to the side. “If you could have hot water brought, I’ll take care of the rest.”

“I can take care of…”

“I’ll do it.” Flint narrows his eyes. “Go,” he says to everyone who is still present. Muldoon. Dooley. Joji. Billy Bones. All of them staring down at what remains of Silver, like a bunch of mother hens fretting over their eggs.

“You should avoid touching the stump for now,” Howell instructs, even as he leaves the basin of water at the foot of the windowsill.

“I will send for you if you’re needed,” Flint dismisses him.

“Aye, Captain.”

The washcloth swims in the basin, half sunken and resembling a drowned man, and Flint stares from it to the space where Silver’s leg ought to be but isn’t. This too was his fault.

 _You couldn’t have known_ , says a voice too similar to Miranda’s in the back of his mind.

He wanted to leave. Flint feels his mouth curl into a cruel smirk. He wanted to leave, but you talked him into staying, didn’t you? Because at the end of the day, you may not have trusted him, but you needed him. _This too is your fault._

You needed him.

There is a thought that Flint is afraid of scratching at, lest the scab comes off and the hidden wound bleeds. He kneels by the windowsill and reaches for the drowning washcloth.

Silver’s face is matted down in sweat and curls that stick to him in a fit of seeming desperation. Even in this unconscious state into which he has descended to escape the pain of his reality, his features are not set easily. No, pain still has its claws in him, of course it does. Flint wrings out the hot water and begins to wash Silver’s legs. He smiles to himself at the story of the Magdalene, but while he may be a sinner, Silver is certainly no Christ.

And yet…

Over and over, Flint dips the washcloth into the basin and brings it out again to press it against Silver’s skin. Who is this man that he should touch him like this? He closes his eyes and willfully ignores the other thoughts that toy with him from the dark recesses of his soul. _He’s beautiful._ Well, what a fucking inconvenient time to remember that! Flint grinds his teeth as he lifts Silver’s hips, just high enough to slip his hand underneath to clean him there too. What the hell is he doing this for? He should have let Howell… Well. He should have done or not done a whole lot of things. No use crying over spilled milk now.

Flint’s hand rests over Silver’s naked hip as the other man sleeps. He looks almost peaceful now, and once Flint finally puts the blanket over his legs and pulls it up over his stomach, he can almost pretend that this is all there is to Silver’s repose. Just a young man, asleep on the windowsill. Perspiration-soaked curls clinging to his cheeks and forehead. Flint draws his thumb softly across Silver’s face, over the crease between his eye and his temple, and finds his thumb comes back moist.

He must not be comfortable like that, with his hair still pulled into a tight pigtail behind his head. Flint knows - he never goes to bed with his hair tied up. Without another thought, he reaches forward and untangles the tie from Silver’s hair, before gently placing his head back onto the old, yellowing pillow that he had given up for the man. The tie itself goes into a drawer in Flint's desk. He can't be bothered to think wherefore.

He _is_ beautiful. And, damn it, there is no use in pretending that Flint hasn’t noticed. It is one of the things that infuriates him most about Silver, in fact. Such effortless beauty. How was he able to make it this far in life without being devoured by the world for his looks alone? For the world is a hungry place and it craves, it always craves that which is beautiful, until the last drop of beauty has been consumed and all that’s left are just the lees from the wine.

As Flint rises up from the windowsill, Silver moans, and Flint is compelled to bend down and pull the blanket tighter over the man, as if swaddling a crying babe. “I am sorry this happened to you,” he whispers. Silver can’t hear him wherever he is at the moment, but that is well. He would never pity the man aloud. Silver deserves better than that.

***

It is a week’s journey from Tortuga to Nassau. Howell was able to procure more laudanum. Silver has not truly woken up from his slumber, at least not in any coherent way, and there is a part of Flint that feels guilty for enjoying this too much.

He would keep him in this state forever, if he could. His sleeping beauty. Safe from pain. Safe from the world that would only get him in trouble. Sometimes, Silver whimpers in his sleeplike state, and Flint comes over to the windowsill again and lets his hand rest over Silver’s heart as it evens out into a slower, more steady rhythm. He uses his own comb to get stubborn tangles out of Silver’s hair, using his own lap to pillow the man’s head as he works, fingers lost in long tresses of curl. If anyone had walked in on that particular display, they would’ve lost both eyes and tongue.

Silver opens his eyes on one such occasion, sea-blue orbs fix slowly on the tip of Flint’s nose and the captain bends over to press those wayward eyelids shut with the tips of his fingers. Flint isn’t concerned. Silver won’t remember this - not with so much laudanum in his system.

Miranda is dead. But not Silver. No, he is alive. Flint can see his chest rise and fall with each breath. He can set his own heart to the rhythm of Silver’s heartbeat.

“I was wrong about you. Forgive me.”

These are also words he will never say to Silver, not when he’s conscious and able to truly hear him.

There was a vote and Silver is his new quartermaster now. The men want to tell Silver themselves, beaming with pride at this - possibly first - act of love that they had consummated upon the decks of the _Walrus_. But Flint is there first, as Silver opens his eyes, and so he seizes the moment for himself.

Flint’s emotions are raw and he’s quite acutely aware of the fondness with which he is looking at Silver. It is a moment pregnant with hope and opportunity. There is so much he wants to say to Silver. _Things will be different now. You and I can build a new, better world together. I believe in you._

Instead, it is Silver who speaks - “There’s something you ought to know before we reach Nassau” - and with just a few words, he shatters any illusions Flint may have still harbored that the world he might build would be better.

***

Flint shaves off his hair over the same basin that he used a few days ago to give Silver the sponge bath that neither one of them will ever mention again. Silver pretends to be asleep. Flint pretends not to know Silver is pretending.

***

“I had these purchased for you in Tortuga,” Flint says, handing over the folded clothes to Silver. He does not say “I purchased these for you myself,” as he had originally planned.

“I wasn’t going to ask what happened to my trousers…” Silver attempts to make a joke, yet it does not sit correctly in his face. Flint watches quietly as Silver gives up trying to smile. Pain has painted his features in shades that he has not gotten accustomed to yet. Flint knows; it’s happened to him as well.

“These should fit you,” Flint replies, ignoring the attempt at levity.

There are many things he had been planning on saying to Silver that Flint accepts now he may never say.

***

In another day, they’ll be in Nassau.

Flint stands over the windowsill, upon which Silver lies in repose. His eyes are closed and his breath is even. His brow unfurrowed. There is a good chance that he is truly sleeping, peacefully roaming through the lands of Morpheus, unencumbered by the constant pangs of agony that haunt his waking moments or the clouding effects of the laudanum.

“You’re not asleep, are you?” Flint finally asks.

“No,” comes the quiet reply, even though Silver’s eyes remain closed.

“Why are you dissembling?”

“I was hoping that if I feigned sleep, that you might touch me again, as you did before.”

It is too much. Flint had been prepared for anything but _that_ , and he pulls the chair closer to the windowsill, sinking into it a bit helplessly.

“I fear sometimes that no one will ever again touch me the way you did,” Silver keeps talking, with his eyes ostensibly closed. Although now that Flint gets a closer look, he can see the deep blue irises peeking out from under the trembling canopy of Silver’s lashes. “It was unexpected. And when I think of it, I am sad.”

“Sad?” Flint’s own voice sounds far away. It echoes in the hollow chamber of his eviscerated breast.

“I may have been fine, not missing the thing, had the thing never occurred. But it did. I felt your hands on me. Soothing me. Holding me.” His eyes are opened now yet he will not meet Flint’s gaze. “Your fingers combing through my hair. Did I dream all that too?”

_The more those men need you, the more you need them. And it drives us to do the most unexpected things._

His own words come back to haunt Flint. How much hope he had instilled in that moment of Silver’s awakening.

“I believe,” Flint says slowly, “that we may both have been dreaming.”

“Was it absolutely necessary that we both awaken?” Silver asks, his eyes now turned towards Flint, whose hands tremble where they lie in his lap.

“Why did you cut the forestay?” Flint asks.

“Had to be done, Captain.”

Had to be done. Flint seems to think he’s heard these exact words before, not too long ago. He shifts from his seat and kneels once again at the foot of the windowsill. His hand brushes a loose curl from over Silver’s face and he lets his hand linger over the tanned skin of his cheekbone.

“You don’t have to awaken,” Flint says as he draws close. “Not yet.”

Their mouths touch and then Silver’s hands are on the back of Flint’s neck, long fingers clinging to him as if he were a lifeline. Flint’s lips tremble as he licks into Silver’s mouth, trying to taste the truth upon his lips. It feels wrong to be touching someone who has never been a Hamilton, but he dares not pull away either. Silver’s nails dig grooves into the back of his neck as he pulls Flint closer, wincing in pain. They are both just swimming against the current of their pain, aren’t they?

“Don’t…” Silver startles as Flint pulls away.

 _We shouldn’t_ , Flint thinks. “Get some rest,” he says and stretches his body along the windowsill, between the glass and Silver’s prone form. His arms wrap around the other man, pulling him close: one under the neck, the other across his chest. He buries his nose in the soft tangles of curl.

When Silver weeps that night, it is Flint who pretends to be asleep.

***

Flint knows what it’s like to live beneath the anvil weight of a lie. To carry it with you, to feel it take root, to seed into everything it touches. It seeded the ground between the two of them. It had made Flint act cruel when he could have been soft. Scorched earth behind him, the flaming sea beneath him. And Silver, always Silver, somewhere in between. The liar saint. Beautiful the same way Lucifer might have been beautiful.

They do not speak of the days spent in the cabin of the warship. They do not speak of the _Urca_ gold again, not when they are alone. Not until the long boat in the doldrums.

It feels good to lay the lie to rest. The standstill that they had been living - as if the stale air itself refused to be moved by the winds so long as this stone lay between them.

“I have stolen from you,” Silver confesses.

 _I know_ , Flint doesn’t say. He’s too relieved, too hungry, and far too tired to fight anymore.

***

Miranda is dead, but the Miranda in his head refuses to let him give up. It’s so infuriatingly like her that Flint cannot be sure that the Miranda in his head is merely the Miranda of his own conjuring.

_You are not alone._

No. There is Silver. And somewhere, in a dark recess of his soul, Flint recognizes that he had begun to forgive the little curly thief a long time ago. Long before he sidled up to him in that cage and told him he’d be sorry to see him dead. Flint supposes that’s as close as the two of them will ever come to admitting they _care_.

Ocracoke did not go as planned, but then again, it might be time he stop pretending he can control the forces around him, and be the creator of his perfect destiny. There is no such thing as the right moment, anyways.

The Maroon Queen’s daughter is much worse at hiding her feelings than he is, at least. With her piercing ebony eyes and her heaving, militantly poised bosom, she is watching their reunion like a hawk. Flint cannot begrudge her this: let her look. Let her see. As he pulls Silver into an embrace and says, “I almost got myself killed again.”

Silver's soft chuckle tickles Flint's cheek. “I ought to punish you, Captain.” There's a glint in his eye. “So… you brought back just Vane?”

All eyes are on them, and suddenly Flint is finished giving a shit.

“Mr. Silver and I need to speak. Alone.”

Silver's eyes widen and his tongue takes a furtive swipe at his lower lip.

“Madi?” It's less a question than a soft demand. What has passed between them while Flint battled Blackbeard and his own stubbornness? She turns and beckons them to follow with a movement of her head.

They have given Silver his own hut, in close proximity to the Queen's. He seems more at home here than he ever did on a ship.

“I'm glad to see you faring better,” Flint mutters.

“Don't leave me behind again,” Silver growls, hand twisting into the collar of Flint's coat.

They have not kissed since that night on the warship, and they've clearly both been ravenous for it. Silver's kisses are demanding, assured, as if this is something Flint owes him. Perhaps he does, after all this time.

***

John’s body is a furnace, a brand burned into Flint’s skin. Their limbs are tangled like roots of the ficus tree, and their flesh is soft and moist from the humid air, their kisses sizzle and cool where they are laid to rest. Being inside him, like this, after so long, Flint isn’t capable of any thought other than _Mine… My own._ The sounds that John makes when Flint thrusts up into the heat of him, make Flint’s skull buzz like a beehive. He teases the skin pulled tightly over the column of John’s throat with his tongue and teeth, and he sinks his fingers into the globes of his quartermaster’s ass, pulling him impossibly closer, impaling him on his cock so deeply that he might never slide off it.

“Please,” is all John utters. “ _Please_ , James.” His fingers leave angry half-moons in the grooves between Flint’s ribs. “Oh god, please, you feel so good. So good.”

Flint buries his face against John’s neck, inhaling the scent of his skin, spiced with arousal and desperation. John’s thighs clamp down around his hips and Flint is awash in the feeling of coming home. He smothers his cries of ecstasy with the warm flesh of John’s collarbones, teeth leaving marks that will be easily seen because the man is insufferably prone to not buttoning up. That will teach him.

“This is so much more than I deserve,” Flint confesses into the mop of curly hair pressed up against his chin.

“What? To bed a cripple?” There is a warm hint of a smile in John’s voice.

“You’ve never been a cripple,” Flint growls, fingers leaving possessive marks in the pale skin of John’s perfectly sculpted ass. “You’ve never been more beautiful,” he adds, his eyes closed, because he doesn’t wish John to see the sincerity in them, lest it not be returned.

Then, warm, chapped lips press softly against Flint’s eyelids.

“I have no idea how this is going to end,” he admits, eyebrows furrowing under the soft touch of Silver’s mouth.

“I wouldn’t lose sleep over it,” John murmurs, mouth seeking out Flint’s again for a lingering kiss that steals his breath away. The little thief. Flint smiles fondly at the man in his arms. “I’m sure either way I can spin it into a tale worth hearing.”

Now _that_ \- Flint does not doubt that for a single moment.

***

You walk in that murky darkness for as long as you can, guided only by the idea that there is an exit out of this tunnel of horrors. You walk and you walk, until, through the penumbra of the gray and the muted, a soft light begins to break. The colors become slightly brighter, the air slightly crisper, and the man in the mirror slightly less of a stranger. Before you know it, you have left the tunnel behind, and even though a thousand cannonballs may still be exploding around you, there is another sound that is louder than all of them. The sound of your own beating heart.

It is a strange feeling when your heart breaks. A stranger feeling still when you discover it has begun to mend itself.

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed this emotional journey XD. Happy Yule!


End file.
